Once upon a time, on a planet that had long become nothing more than a legend, there lived a group of children. Five ordinary children, connected only in that they were orphaned and unremarkable. Children chosen for the mission that lay ahead of them. They had no say, no way of stopping what was going to happen to them. Five children with the weight of the universe on their shoulders, and the parents who had bonded with them. Five children who were to put to stop the most devastating war that had ever existed in the universe. The hope of an entire race, and all the power that came with it.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Doctor Who
The Children of Gallifrey
Episode One
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
The Doctor stumbled a bit as she found herself aboard her TARDIS. It was definitely her ship, she could feel that much as certain. She clutched one of the crystals, trying to get her balance.
"Doctor?" asked a familiar voice. The Doctor spun round to see Graham and Ryan standing there in bewilderment.
"Oh yes," the Doctor said gratefully, hugging her two friends, before pulling back and staring at both of them. "Where's Yaz?"
"The Nightmare Child took her," Graham said. "She offered herself up to save us, so the child took her and left us alone."
"For the love of-" muttered the Doctor, but then again, that's who Yaz was when you got down to it. Always willing to risk her own life to help others.
"Okay, right," the Doctor said. "First thing's first. We need to find a way of stopping the children from having power over us."
Graham and Ryan looked at each other, wondering if they were going to get a lot and complicated explanation, but the Doctor seemed to just ignore them and disappear out of the console room. Before either of them could react she was back, holding a familiar cube in her hand.
"Isn't that the time box thingy that could stop time?" Graham asked in concern. The Doctor ignored him, taking the cube over to the console. A strange claw seemed to grow out of the console and take hold of the cube. More claws came out, each grabbing a corner of the box and pulling. It neatly split into four pieces, quickly being tied off with a piece of string. The Doctor grabbed the four dangling mini-cubes and handed one to Graham and Ryan in turn.
"This should stop the worst of the effects from reaching you," the Doctor said. "I don't know how much juice they have, but it should create a bubble of reality around us."
"That's good to know," Graham said. "What's your plan now?"
"I'm going to go look for the children," the Doctor said. "You're going to stay here in the TARDIS."
"Yeah right," Ryan said. "We're here to help you Doctor."
"You honestly have no idea what we're about to face, do you? We're about to enter into a second Time War, one that is quickly escalating unless I come up with some way of stopping it. Last thing I need to do is worry about you lot."
"The fact that you think you're going to get away leaving us behind worries us more," said Graham. "You know we're always here for you Doctor. Do you really want to spend all your effort trying to stop us?"
"But this is far beyond anything you've seen before," the Doctor replied.
"Doctor, everything we've seen with you is far beyond what we've seen before," countered Ryan. "And we've had plenty of time to decide that this life wasn't for us, and yet we're still here. Let us help you Doctor."
"But-" the Doctor said, somewhat hopelessly.
"We're coming with you and that's final," Graham said definitively. "Now lets hurry up and stop this Time War thingy from getting out of hand."
The Doctor looked like she was about to argue, but relented.
"I don't deserve you two," she said, flashing a warm smile at them. Graham and Ryan stole glances at each other and smiled in turn, as the pieces of cube around their neck faintly hummed and glowed.
"So where we going?" asked Ryan.
"I have a hunch where one of the children might be," the Doctor said. "I hope I'm wrong though."
"Why?" asked Graham.
"Because it'd further prove their escape was my fault," the Doctor replied grimly, hand gripping a lever. "This is your last chance. You don't have to-"
Neither man replied, just putting their hands on the lever. The Doctor looked at both of them and nodded.
"Next stop Hillscarian," she said, and threw the lever, sending her and her closest friends straight into the depths of Hell.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"Doctor," began Ryan, but words failed him. There was little that he could say that would accurately describe what was happening before them.
"Hard to fight on a battlefield when it keeps changing," the Doctor said grimly. "Come on, we need to head for the eye of the storm. Stay close."
"You don't have to tell us twice," said Graham, as his foot left pavement and landed back down in mud, before his next foot landed in sand. He held up his hand to block out the four suns, only for him to lower it when they suddenly disappeared, replaced instead by an encroaching asteroid, which itself turned into a mountain of sparkles.
Slowly they crept forward as the landscape around them changed, hands held to try and stop themselves from losing each other. Ryan would say it was akin to having someone rapidly changing channels, as they moved from one environment to another, but even that was a poor explanation.
"What happened to the people?" Graham asked in concern, as a mighty city crumbled to dust within mere moments, before a jungle sprung up around them.
"If they're lucky they've been wiped out," the Doctor said, teeth gritted as pain seared across her body.
"And if they're not?" began Ryan, but he was cut off by a strange noise. All three travellers turned to see a large hulking lizard monster, its five heads dripping with green saliva as its three tails beat on the ground.
"Run!" the Doctor said urgently, pulling her two companions behind them, as the ground around them suddenly turned to a quagmire. The three of them desperately tried to wade through it, as the beast behind them pounced at them.
Graham and Ryan shut their eyes in fear, only to find themselves suddenly back on dry land. They turned to see that the horrifying lizard monster was now nothing more than a small feathered baby chick. It screamed for its mother as it continued to swivel its head around and around, far more rotations than a being should ever be able to do. Suddenly it exploded into a group of butterflies, taking to the sky.
"What-" began Ryan.
"Wasn't only the battlefield that constantly changed," the Doctor replied. "You'd be amazed how many different ways a species could have evolved if a different fish had been eaten instead."
"This is too weird," Ryan said.
"The fact that you're still able to mentally cope is commendable," the Doctor said. "Most humans who have had a glimpse of this went absolutely mad. That poor Lovecraft fellow only saw the briefest of glimpse of the Time War, and look what he ended up creating."
"Well we're here for you Doctor," Graham said. "How else do you think we're going to get through this."
"Thanks," the Doctor said, before sagging to her knees and letting out a gasp of pain.
"Doctor!" both her friends said in concern.
"I'm fine," the Doctor said, slowly getting back up, the mud on her pants already disappearing. "Being surrounded by this much paradox energy... it's like walking through lava."
"Well then lets find the source of it, aye?" said Ryan, throwing one of the Doctor's arms over his shoulders.
"Yeah, sooner we get this done, sooner we can get home," agreed Graham, taking the other arm and hoisting the Doctor up between himself and his grandson.
"Just keep going forward," the Doctor hissed, as she tried to suppress another gasp of pain. "I think the child wants to meet us."
"You got it Doc," said Graham, as the two of them continued forward through the nightmare around them, hoping against hope that they'd find a way through all this. But they had the Doctor. The Doctor had never let them down. She was always there to save the day.
It was just a matter of whether there'd be a day left to save.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
The parliamentary building, more castle than anything else, remained unchanged despite everything that was happening around it. As day and night flickered like a broken bulb, as temperatures rose and dropped like a yo yo, the castle stood ever impassive.
Graham looked at Ryan, who shrugged. The Doctor had fallen unconscious at some point, and with no other plan they'd just kept walking forward. Sure enough they'd eventually found the castle, though it felt more like it was coming closer to them than they to it.
With no other options Graham raised his hand and knocked on the door. There was a tense moment of silence, as the ground underneath them slid from solid to liquid to gas and back again. Then slowly, painfully, the door finally opened, allowing the three inside.
The inside of the building was... Graham and Ryan looked at each other at a loss for words. It was as if one had come in from an incredibly powerful storm, into a house that was warm and inviting.
"Right then," the Doctor said, suddenly waking up and throwing off her two friends. "That's better, doesn't that feel better? Anyway, we mustn't hang around."
"Welcome," said a familiar voice. The three of them looked up to see another version of the Doctor standing there, one wearing a black ensemble.
"Don't tell me we're going to go through this again," the Doctor said wearily. "Is this where you claim to be the Valeyard and I have to defend basic decency?"
"Oh no, none of that," said the other being, briefly flickering back into the form of a child. "I just thought I should try your body out for size, see what it's like."
"You're the Paradox Child," Ryan said.
"As observant as ever," the child said, switching to a copy of Ryan. "Lovely to meet you again."
"You have to stop this," the Doctor said.
"Do I?" the child replied, shifting back into a dark mirror of the Doctor. "What makes you think I caused it?"
"All that out there, that's your doing."
"That is a by-product of my existence, yes. But do you blame the wind for a hurricane? The ocean for a tsunami? I may be causing it, but I didn't create this in the first place."
"You're literally the Paradox Child," Graham countered. "All that out there looks like paradoxes to me."
"Only to your feeble mind," the child said, wearing Graham's body. "You don't know what real paradoxes look like. You can't truly comprehend the power that I wield."
"You have to stop this," the Doctor said, trying to get the child's attention, get the child distracted while she got to work activating the piece of cube around her neck. If she could just trap it in there...
"Don't you wonder what caused all this to happen?" the child asked suddenly. "Where all this began? What led to all of us getting free."
"That doesn't matter," lied the Doctor, as she kept her eyes on the child.
"Oh but I think it does," the child replied. "You're curious, I can tell. Why don't I show you why all of this exists."
Suddenly the room around them was gone. They were back in the TARDIS, watching themselves as the TARDIS shook around them.
"'ere, what's happening with the TARDIS Doc?" Graham asked, the other Graham, the one the Graham with the child was watching. They watched the other Graham hold his hands over his ears, the awful screeching getting louder.
"The TARDIS doesn't want to land," said the other Doctor, spread-eagled over the console so she could press six different buttons at once.
"I remember this," said Ryan, as he looked upon it. "This was when we were trying to land in Cardiff, where we found time had frozen."
"Can they see us?" Graham asked, as the past version of the Doctor continued to wrestle with the TARDIS.
"No, we can't be seen by them," the Doctor said. "But why are you showing us this?"
"Are you saying we're almost out of fuel?" asked Yaz, as Ryan and Graham looked at her with shock. Clearly they must have known her, and yet...
"Sort of," the past Doctor said, as the TARDIS continued to rattle and shake. The companions were torn between blocking their eyes and holding onto the TARDIS console.
"You weren't really out of fuel, were you Doctor," the child said. "You just didn't want to admit defeat, did you."
The Doctor said nothing, watching her past self ignore her companions fears and the warning from the TARDIS. She remembered what happened well. Everything was saying not to land there, and she was determined to do so solely because she hated being told what to do. The current Doctor looked at the fear on her companion faces, something she'd ignored when she was flying the TARDIS, feeling that whatever was happening was more important.
"This was the moment," the child said, as the past Doctor looked at her fam. The past Doctor nodded, pulling a lever with all her might. The TARDIS stopped rumbling, easing into a calm silence.
"Okay then, you win," the past Doctor said. "You don't want to land old girl, we won't land. We'll go somewhere else instead."
"What happened Doctor?" asked Yaz.
"The TARDIS was refusing to land in Cardiff in twenty-nineteen," the past Doctor replied. "Really doesn't want to go there for some reason. All of twenty-nineteen might be off-limits until I get it sorted."
"That's okay Doc," said the past version of Graham. "Everyone knows we're out travelling, it'll be fine."
"Thanks fam," the Doctor said. "Anyway, we can get rift energy later. Have I ever shown you the pink sapphire falls on the third moon of Sirius? Truly beautiful."
"Sounds great," the past Ryan said. The past Doctor looked at her fam, the companions she trusted the most, and pulled a different lever. With that the TARDIS and the previous occupants disappeared around them, leaving the Doctor, Ryan, Graham and the Child back where they started.
"What just happened?" Ryan asked, thoroughly confused.
"It was because of the Doctor's arrogance that the first crack in our prison was created," the child replied nastily. "Had the Doctor left well-enough alone then everything would have turned out fine. The Time Cube would have been collected by the Judoon in a few days and properly destroyed, with no collateral damage. Everything would have worked out if the Doctor had thought to put your safety above her own curiosity."
"Even so-" began Graham.
"How many times has the Doctor put you in danger?" the child asked. "Not just you. Your friends. Your family. The entire planet, hell, the entire universe. The Doctor claims to be a lord of time, and yet will happily break those rules whenever she see fits. Her actions across her lifetime were cracking the cage, but that moment... that was the final one we needed."
"You made your point," the Doctor said bitterly, as she continued to work with her cube.
"Oh, I don't think I have," the child said. "Aren't you curious about what happened to the other Doctor? The other Ryan, and Graham, and Yaz?"
The Doctor paused, not sure whether she wanted to comprehend what the child was saying to her.
"They kept going on, you know. They kept having adventures. Would you like to see them?"
Before any of them could say anything the world around them changed again to find themselves in a strange tunnel, watching themselves wipe away dust on a train station sign. Another moment passed, seeing the Doctor and a strange woman in a room that sort of looked like the TARDIS console. Another moment, now they saw the Doctor handing over a silver liquid metal to a half-human half-robot thing. Suddenly there were back to where they were suppose to be, even more confused.
"That Doctor, she's out there," the child said. "She's been going on adventures, same as you. Two Doctor's, of equal age, but totally different lives. Truly the most powerful paradox."
"I'm confused," Graham admitted.
"Our timeline got split into two," the Doctor said. "One version of us, they went off and had those adventures that you saw. The other version of us, us us, did everything we did."
"So which one of those is the real us?" Ryan asked in confusion. "Cos I feel pretty real."
"Oh you are," the child said. "One hundred percent real. And so is he. The other you. Both entirely real and valid people wandering the universe, doing different things. Your mere existence was paradoxical enough, let alone everything your group and the other group got up to."
"So there's two me's?" Ryan asked, still trying to wrap his head around it.
"Oh yes," the child said excitedly. "And you are just giving off the most wonderful paradox energy. You all are. It's like an all-you-can-eat buffet"
"Then I guess it's time we stop you," the Doctor said, suddenly holding her section of the cube out triumphantly!
There was an awkward pause as a whole lot of nothing happened. Graham and Ryan looked at the Doctor in confusion.
"Oh please," said the Paradox Child. "You think you could capture me in that prison of yours again? It hardly has enough power."
"Then I'll force you in," the Doctor replied, bringing up her sonic screwdriver.
"Let's say you do," the child countered. "Are you going to fit us all into there? That cube is connected to your essence, do you truly think you'll be able to hold all of us without losing control?"
"That's a risk I'm willing to take," the Doctor said, preparing to turn the sonic on.
"Wait!" said Ryan. Everyone turned to look at him, but he only had eyes for the child.
"I don't know what's going on," he admitted. "But you could be captured inside this cube thing, yeah?" He lifted up his cube, holding it out in front of him.
"And this cube is tied to me, yeah?"
"Glad to see you're following along," the child said.
"And I'm full of paradox energy, yeah? Then why not get into my cube then? Why not feast off of me."
"Ryan no!" the Doctor said urgently.
"I mean look at me," Ryan said, ignoring the Doctor. "I'm a complete paradox. I have dyspraxia and yet I've climbed more ladders and ridden more bikes than I could possibly count. The world tells me to be one thing, and yet I continue to be another."
The child said nothing, looking at Ryan with curiosity.
"What am I if not a paradox?" Ryan asked. "A constant walking ball of contradictions? Surely that must give you something to feed off of."
"I see," the child said slowly. "You're saying I could feed off your paradoxical energy, to leech off of you, for as long as I like?"
"As long as you stop doing what it is you're doing to this planet," Ryan replied.
"Ryan, you can't," the Doctor said. "It's too dangerous."
"And it isn't when you do it?"
The Doctor couldn't think of a reply, instead turning to Graham, hoping to win him over to her side. Graham looked between his friend and his grandson.
"Will it hurt him?" Graham asked the child. "If you go into this prison thing?"
"He and I will be bonded," the child said. "He will have all my powers, but will still be in control. It will not hurt."
"What happens if the child does go into Ryan?" Graham asked the Doctor.
"Well it would contain the child," the Doctor replied. "It would keep the universe safe as we figure out what the next course of action is."
"It's me versus the entire universe," Ryan said. "There isn't a decision."
"You can't do this," the Doctor said desperately. "Tell him Graham."
Ryan looked at Graham, who stared back at his grandson. Slowly, eventually, he let out a nod.
"Ryan needs to make his own choices," Graham said. "I believe in him."
"But-" began the Doctor, but she couldn't find her voice. She tried to move, only to find her feet had sunk into the ground. Clearly the child wasn't going to let her get in the way.
"To feast off your energy," the child said, as he walked closer to Ryan.
"Promise you'll stop all of this," Ryan said. "Promise you won't hurt anyone."
"For your energy? Anything." The child stopped in front of Ryan, creating a mirror image of the young man.
"Do we have a deal?" it asked. Ryan took one last look at the Doctor and Graham, before grabbing the child's hand. There was a bright light, one that forced everyone to close their eyes.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
They were back in the TARDIS. The doors were open, revealing a peaceful city park. Birds sang, children played, there was the faint hum of cars rumbling by. Then the doors slammed shut, the only noise being the hum of the TARDIS.
"Ryan!" the Doctor said urgently, finally able to speak.
"I'm here," Ryan said, appearing from around the console, Graham next to him. The cube round his neck glowed a solid red, pulsating slightly.
"How do you feel?" the Doctor asked, rushing over to her friend.
"I feel... fine," Ryan said in confusion. "I can't believe that actually worked."
"So what's the plan, Doc?" Graham asked. "How do we get this thing out of my grandson."
"In theory it should be a simple matter of creating a portal to another bubble universe and sealing them shut in it," the Doctor said. "But in practice..."
"You might as well say it," Ryan said, as the pause stretched out.
"You'll have to be trapped in the bubble universe as well," the Doctor said. "Unable to ever come back. I'm sorry Ryan, but for the good of the universe, we're going to have to leave you behind... forever."
